Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday November 05, 2009 @04:32PM
from the If-you-like-that-sort-of-thing dept.

bonch writes "Contrary to previous reports, Atom chip support is working fine in the latest 10C535 build of OS X 10.6.2. Apple's EULA still states that OS X is licensed to run only on Apple hardware, but it looks like OSX86 hackers can breathe easy ... for now."

Translation: I know that yesterday's story that Apple intentionally disabled Atom processors from working for OSX was completely wrong but I'm going to imply, in an ominous way, that Apple will probably do what they didn't do (which we incorrectly said they did do) because, hey, that's sensational and sensationalism sells baby!!

Sorry, but it would be really nice if summaries tried to keep the editorializing to a minimum. We have reader comments to add all kinds of overblown and baseless opinions. Let's keep the focus of the summary on, you know, the news for nerds, stuff that matters.

Because of a license agreement with Microsoft that specified a max of 1GB of RAM and an 80GB HD (most got around that with splitting it into two or more partitions) to allow them to install Windows XP.

I'm not sure if the agreement has changed with the release of Windows 7 Starter.

That's like saying that Ubuntu is based directly on Unix, and I have seen Linux run on 12Mhz Mini Computers!

I promise, there is no way in HELL that your getting Ubuntu running on a 12Mhz Mini Computer. In fact, I'd wager that there isn't a Linux kernel that will work on an old 70's era Mini Computer (though I may be wrong).

Windows 7 is based on Windows NT, though I doubt you will be seeing Windows 7 running on a 386 with 12 MB of RAM like NT 3.5 did.

The Atom chip can't really compete with the first x86 CPU's that shipped in Mac PC's. It's close to the Core Solo found in the first Mac Mini, but the lack of out of order execution in the Atom gives the Solo a slight edge.

I would imaging for Netbook like tasks, OSX would be quite nice on Atom. Just don't try and use photoshop or possibly even iPhoto. But this has NOTHING to do with what NextStep could do on a 486, OSX will NEVER run remotely usably on a 25MHz 486 (if at all).

I work within a group at Apple. I'd rather remain 'anonymous' but I can assure you it was this 'bug' was NOT in our builds. I know because we do test against ATOM, and also several other hacked machines to verify clean builds, and all the builds worked on similar hardware.

No idea what this guy's issue was, but for people to assume that it had anything to do with us willfully disabling support is just stupid.

With each point release we have a set of objects, we don't have 3 builds of 10.6.2 that WORK on ATOM, and magically in between spend large amounts of time and effort to go through code and put in a new 'feature' to disable support. The fact that the internet community thinks we would go back and disable something like this in the MIDDLE of a release cycle is silly.